1] Tinsley is basically recycling a 20 year old Douglas Addams joke (i.e. when the marketing execs from the B Arc, who have been marooned on the ancient Earth, waste their time arguing about what color the newly (re)invented wheel should be.)

2] The seurgym[*] of a strip in which Tinsley --who has repeatedly made it clear that Ronald Reagan is the paradigm of All That Is Good-- dares to ridicule anyone about choosing "style over substance".

[* I was going to use the word "irony" here, but that wasn't nearly strong enough. So I just went with my "Word Verification".]

Continuing my series of "ignoring political content and just improving the quality of this strip":

Given that the two cavemen are homogenous, and that the "wheel" invented by the first is functionally useless, this joke makes more sense.

If one was sweatily toiling trying to build a fire (or holding up a lit torch) showing evidence of strenuous effort, and the other was lounging with some kind of... I don't know, pelt, or hat, or hat pelt... VOILA! The joke actually works.

Just saying you have style is as about effective as inferring that you have humour in something entitled a "comic" strip.

This guy makes a living with badly drawn, unfunny comics whose only point is bitterness. Somebody help me if I got that wrong. I guess it's what you'd expect from a guy who lives in the same alternate universe as Brush Limpbaugh.

Leonard Pitts nailed it. Anger is all they have. To bad it isn't actually at something. Then it could possibly be dealt with.

I don't think Tinkley really gets wheels. From a purely utilitarian perspective, Caveman 1 has produced a perfectly useless bit of stonework. There is no substance to a circle that lacks the capacity to rotate on an axle. As a result, Tinkley has vitiated whatever "joke" he was trying to make.

Of course, there's no small resemblance between the "wheel" and an "O" such as that used in various Obama icons. I'd bet a plastic bottle of rot-gut gin, Tinkley thinks he's being all subtle and shit and cluing us in to who he thinks is all style and no substance.